New Nintendo DS homebrew music apps

The Nintendo DS homebrew scene is heading into a heavily musical interlude with a few new apps. This is good news for anyone who liked Protein DScratch but wanted more options and functionality. More information after the break.

The second is a program called dsmcu; it doesn’t make music itself, but is designed to control an external MIDI program or device via WiFi. As the name implies, it uses the mcu protocol to send and receive fader data, display live VU meters, control tracks and volume, and scrub. It is currently in beta and only works with Reaper and DSMI, but the developers are confident that they’ll get Logic and Pro Tools working with it soon.

We don’t expect you to use these as a substitute for Korg DS-10, the commercial Korg synth emulator for the DS. Rather, when used in along with it, these programs make the DS into a surprisingly potent tool for making and mixing music.